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Dan and Judy Bauer with Candy Harrington at the future site of the Accessible Wilderness Society lodge and campground.

Dan Bauer has a dream – an inclusive wilderness facility with barrier-free campsites, yurts and even a rustic lodge. And until he met his wife Judy that’s all it was – a dream. Says Judy, “I’m a action kind of person, so I told Dan that he either had to start working to make his dream happen, or stop talking about it and move on.” Says Dan, “And since there’s no way I could stop talking about it, I had to get moving and take some action.” And so The Accessible Wilderness Society was born. Continue reading →

After having just spent two months on the road, I’ve decided that I definitely am a road tripper. Here are a few ways to determine if you are too

You have more than 3 Wal-Marts loaded into your GPS.

You get excited when you get quarters in change, because you can add them to your laundry money.

You buy an Egg McMuffin, just to get an internet connection.

Not only have you named your GPS, but you also have regular conversations with him/her.

You snag fruit from the free breakfast buffet at your hotel, so you can have dessert with your picnic lunch.

You can effortlessly rattle off the states where you can only buy liquor in a state liquor store.

You don’t even think twice about wearing a shirt for two days.

You instinctively know when you’ve crossed a time zone — and you always know what time it is in Arizona.

You know the difference between a rest area represented by a green triangle on an AAA map, and one represented by a green triangle with a circle around it. Hint: if you really need to “rest” you need the latter.

Your neighbors actually think your house sitters live in your house, and that you are just visiting.

You get mad when you can’t find your toiletry bag in the bathroom, until you realize that you are at home.

The last time you bough soap or hand lotion was 1979.

Napkins become a precious commodity – for those in-room dinners and picnic lunches.

You get excited when you get to stay in the same place for more than one night.

You know what day it is by looking at the newspaper, and you know it’s the weekend if you don’t find a USA today in the hotel lobby.

In these days of social media, what once could have been an overlooked complaint, can go viral in a matter of days. Such is the case an incident that happened to Mr. Chad Staples at his recent stay at the Best Western in Monahans, TX. Continue reading →

Well, we’re putting the finishing touches on our road trip, so I thought I’d sit down with Cherrie and go over our plans. After all, half the fun of any trip is planning for it.

We’re set to leave next week, and we’ll be gone for about a month. The trip will take us from California to the East Coast; where we’ll turn south and then make another right and go through Tennessee and Kentucky. They we’ll head over to Missouri and down to Arkansas, before heading home via the Southern route; through Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Arizona and Nevada.

All in all, we will travel through 21 states, and we’ll put well over 7,000 miles on our car. In most cases we’ll only overnight in a town, but in some cases we’ll stay for a few nights.

And along the way we’ll stop and review some wheelchair-accessible things to do. In fact, that’s the whole reason for the trip. There’s a whole lot of really cool things to see in the US, many of which are accessible. And some might be just right around the corner from you.

So follow us on our trip. You might spy a favorite place of yours, or even see something you’ve always wanted to visit.

As I was searching for some accessible airport transportation for a friend last week, Charles happened across a great resource — the National Limousine Association.

Just type in the city and choose “wheelchair accessible” from the drop down menu. It’s pretty easy.

As for accuracy, well the search returns a variety of companies, including those that have limousines, vans, and buses. It’s not appropriate for finding the cheapest accessible transportation, because they are private transfers; but it may help if the city doesn’t have a Super Shuttle, accessible taxis or public transportation at the airport.

In my case, it gave me several options – ones that I was unaware of before – to investigate.

Flight attendants have a very difficult job; a job that I know full well I couldn”t do. Truth be told, I”d probably be fired on the first day for telling an inconsiderate passenger exactly where he could go (and I don”t mean baggage claim). But seasoned flight attendants think on their feet, solve problems, diffuse difficult situations; and at the same time offer snappy comebacks to roadblocks thrown up by idiot passengers.

Case and point, is the flight attendant retort posted in Jacquelyn Mitchard”s blog. Jacqueline was injured while traveling around the US and as a result had to spend half of her trip on crutches. She had some problems with a few comments from passengers aboard one of her flights. More specifically, after she hobbled back to 36C and needed to stow her crutches, she found one passenger a bit too overprotective of his precious overhead bin space (and his overcoat). A quick witted flight attendant was attempting to assist Mitchard in finding room to stow her crutches when she opened up the idiot passenger”s overhead bin. That”s when the following exchange took place.